Jacksonville's Regency Square mall under contract for possible buyers

Regency Square mall is no longer listed on the website of General Growth Properties as one of its holdings.

Regency Square mall could be getting closer to changing hands.

Though no one has closed on the property yet, it has been under contract for weeks.

Thomas E. Dobrowski, who as senior managing director of Rockwood Real Estate Advisors is marketing the mall for its owners, confirmed that the buyer is a partnership between Namdar Realty Group and Mason Asset Management, both located in Great Neck, N.Y.

Namdar, a privately held commercial real estate investment and management firm, owns about 50 office buildings and shopping centers, including Jacksonville Regional Shopping Center at 3000 Dunn Ave. It bought that 220,000-square-foot center, which is 85 percent occupied and anchored by Winn-Dixie and JC Penney, in September for $6.8 million.

It was one of seven shopping centers Namdar bought in 2013.

In 2012, Mason Asset Management bought the struggling DeSoto Square in Bradenton. It’s also anchored by a Sears and a JC Penney, along with a Macy’s. JC Penney recently extended its lease by five years, according to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

The mall has changed little since then, the Herald-Tribune reported. An article in November said:

“And in a year’s time, new owners Mason Asset Management hasn't done a whole lot to update the mall and its perception in the community, despite a successful track record of taking older properties similar to DeSoto Square and giving them a facelift.

“Tenants are still hard to come by. A crossfit gym is the only new business to open this year, inside a former boater supplier's 11,000-square-foot space.”

Regency Square opened in 1967 as the area’s biggest shopping attraction. But it’s struggled to keep shoppers and tenants in recent years.

According to the annual reports by its owners, Chicago-based General Growth Properties, the mall was 74.1 percent occupied in December 2011, but 37.9 percent occupied in December 2013.

Belk, one of the mall’s four anchors, is building a new store 4 miles east at the corner of Atlantic and Kernan boulevards. The company has not said whether it will close the Regency store when the new one opens next year, but employees have told customers that they’ll be moving to the new location.

GGP, which bought the mall in 1991, put it on the market last year. The company has declined any comment on the mall, which is no longer listed among GGP’s properties on its website.

The Sears and Dillard’s stores in Regency own their buildings and part of the parking lot.

hood rats have taken the mall and driven it into the ground. You can thank HUD and forced integration of HUD housing in communities of privately owned homes for the destruction of Arlington and other once decent sections of town.. When there is a bus line that runs from the hood directly to the mall, you can be assured of its demise.